Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/146

 the name of Mygale meridionalis, though, if we are to rely implicitly on the figures and detailed account given by this naturalist, we must suppose that it constructs a different nest in Southern Italy from that which it makes on the Riviera, and one which, although it agrees in most other respects, is destitute of the characteristic subterranean door.

It is more likely, however, that M. Costa has over-looked the existence of the lower door, though it is strange that he should have done so, as he says that the nests "sometimes have a double aperture, and the upper portions of the burrows meet and anastomose at about two inches distance," thus showing that he was aware that the tube is branched.

One more nest only now remains to be described, and this is again an example of a new type—namely, of that which I have distinguished as the unbranched double door (Plate XII.), the work of Nemesia Eleanora. This nest is never branched, and its second and subterranean door is situated from one to four inches below the surface door, and only serves to close the one tube which is narrowed above the insertion of this lower door. Here, as in the branched nest, the thin and wafer-like surface door appears to serve principally for concealment and the lower one for resistance. This latter, made out of earth encased in strong white silk, is from one to two lines thick, and has, at the end away from the hinge, a similar appendage to that found in the lower door of the branched nest. This appendage serves, I imagine, as a kind of ear by which the door, when firmly jammed into the tube on the approach of an enemy, may be pulled down again as soon as the alarm is over. As